


Shadows

by ScratchyWilson



Category: Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Soliloquy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-03
Updated: 2008-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScratchyWilson/pseuds/ScratchyWilson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chillingworth reflects on the dark parts of men's souls. Even a priest's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

Long have I been living on borrowed time- if thou couldst call it living. Too long have I merely been the phantom of a living being. The man I was in merry old England now dost lie on the bottom on the wide and merciless sea; thrown there by one who was his wife. Too much of a leech became I these past years- too dependant on one whom these goodly people of Boston wouldst call a saint. Such Godly people as this, they wouldst never wish to find their blessed Reverend Dimmesdale to have committed an earthly sin! They wouldst prefer to find the blame in such a wretched creature as myself.

But in the shame of this sin I have basked and lived nigh these past seven years. His self-disgust of committing and concealing the great indulgence of his life hath been my sustenance. Neither food nor drink hath truly passed my lips and been used to further the processes of life. The sweet ambrosia that my revenge became to me- addictive in its very nature- was sustenance enough. But such was my addiction that I did not lose control of my faculties.

I hath heard what was whispered, excuses created in the shadows of every man's soul. Black Man, I hath been called- if only it were as simple as making my mark in Satan's Book. No, no Black Man am I. I hath sought to do something more wicked than signing in blood or riding with Mistress Hibbins, above the darkened forest. I hath sought to wreak a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever sought to wreak upon an enemy. Such decisive action as this had, on my part, demanded no small amount of planning.

In every action I hath sought to bring my vengeance to its full and exquisite fruition. I curse the God who had stolen, from within my very grasp, my revenge; the God who had led the good and dear Reverend to that accursed scaffold. Only there couldst that damned priest have escaped my wrath! There on that scaffold, he passed forever beyond my reach. Now, barely a year hath passed since that fateful day- a revelation for the people of Boston. But no revelation wouldst there be for me- long was I aware of what ailed the priest.

In my defense, an earthly physician couldst have done little to ease the sickness that spread, not through the patient's body, but from his very soul. The Reverend's carnal lust was the true root of his disease. Little did I do to heighten the humiliation felt by the priest. I did perchance set his feet on the path that wouldst lead him to my ultimate revenge, but it was by his own will that he was carried so close to the edge. The hellish requirement for repentance, that he had contrived himself, was more obscene than any torture I couldst have devised.

That fateful day, whence he would place himself on the pedestal of infamy on which I had found Hester Prynne on so long ago, hath left me withering, as a plant without the sun. With the ink drying on my last will and testament, the final act of my life that could be considered honorable, I shall pass on from this wild place and seek what little consolation there might be left to me in death.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a high school English project ages ago, but I'm still rather proud of the vernacular.


End file.
